Angel's Shelter
by janya.wrote.nightrose
Summary: Rosalie and Emmett each have a confession to make. One is of love, the other is slightly more sinister. Pre-twilight One-shot.


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Called Beautiful Part One

Rosalie and Bella

They call her beautiful, and I want to laugh when they do. Beautiful, ha! She is nothing like beauty. I am beautiful. And I know it.

Bella, they call her. Beautiful.

In no way does the name suit her. She's small, insecure, plain. Not like me. I am a goddess, and I know it. I am proud of my beauty, though it's brought so much pain. It makes me unique. Special.

She isn't special. She isn't beautiful.

And I love her for it.

I'm not sure why. I've tried very hard to deny it… it makes no sense. I love Emmett. And though the way I feel about her is different, it is the same emotion.

In some ways. In others…

Emmett is safety. Emmett is solidity. Emmett is strength. Emmett is forever.

It's what's meant to be. It is unchangeable and unchanging, and that's what I'm supposed to want.

But when you look at Bella…

I don't change. We don't change. It's the way our kind is. Eternity never shifts. But every moment she is different. From that blush which colors her face to the uncertainty of so simple an action as walking, Bella is constantly on the edge. One instant she is happy, the next sad. One minute she loves Edward…

No. I can't think that way, hope she'll return my affection, because I don't want her to. I don't have any.

I almost laugh at the pitiful lie to myself. I am utterly fascinated with this interloping human, this stranger who invades my happy family to steal my brother and… my dead heart.

It's hard to admit to myself. Very hard. I don't want to think I am alterable, that what I've felt for Emmett all this time… the strongest thing I've ever felt… can disappear so quickly.

Not that it's gone. I still feel on fire when he's near. I still love him. I just don't… want him the way I want her. I need him like I always did, but I don't want him anymore, not like I used to.

It's miserable. I have gained nothing in this, only lost my content. I am the same as before, only not so happy.

I hate her for it. She's taken away my brother, my stability, and not only that, she wants the change. So she can spend all of eternity taunting me with what I'll never have.

They call her beautiful- but I, too, am called beautiful. I think I deserve the title.

What good has it ever done me?

Beautiful shattered my first happy life. Now it has broken my second chance into sorrowing splinters as well. Beautiful… the name of my own personal curse. Beautiful, all shine and no substance. Beautiful, pleasant to look at, poison within.

I am beautiful. She is named Beautiful.

We would be a good match, don't you think? Two pieces of one puzzle, two proverbial peas in a metaphorical pod.

No. I am happy the way I am. I love Emmett. He is my happy ending, and Bella is nothing more than a complication.

Call Beauty all you like. I will not answer to that name any more. She can provoke no response from me.

I am set the way I am. Beautiful, you will not make me change.

Called Beautiful Part Two

Alice and Bella

She's beautiful.

I know what beauty is. It is not me. I have perfection of futures, but, unlike Rose and even Esme, as a human I was nothing exceptional. I am not beautiful.

I am frozen, crystallized. Like a diamond.

Diamonds are made out of really old dinosaur poop, by the way…

An even better metaphor than I intended. Or was it a simile? They don't have language arts classes in insane asylums.

She, however, is beautiful. In a way that has nothing to do with rock hard sparkling snow white skin over features shrunken and twisted to perfect monstrous points and everything to do with the warmth of her.

It isn't the warmth Edward's always on ago, not the heat of her skin or the racing pulse of her heart, her heart… No, it has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with the smile that's only for me, the bright laughter, her sweet tender gentleness, her impulsive embraces, her sudden forgiveness even after I was stupid enough to let Edward be stupid enough to leave her behind for what he said would be forever.

Edward wasn't strong enough. And neither was I. Without her… I was empty. Not all because of her, partially because my family was falling apart, but mostly because of Bella.

Bella- it means beautiful in just about every language. I speak most Romance languages.

Not from any human experience, not that it was ever a part of my "real life" brief as that was, just because eternity gets tedious.

Could that be it? Could all this… desire… be from nothing more than boredom? I'm happy, blindingly happy, with Jasper, and I know, absolutely, that it will never change- I can see the future, remember?

And for some reason that depresses me, this surety that I'll always be happy skippy Alice with my morose beloved Jasper at my side. I don't want to remain the same forever. I don't like my unchanging eternity. I wish to return my happy ending in exchange for something more, a struggle, a fight, something.

Bella is a fight. An epic battle to win the unconquerable. She's a modern maiden, yes, very much a child of this new century.

She's also, and how to put this without admitting to myself something I don't wish to consider, straight. She is clearly interested in men, not women.

And she's in love with Edward.

And I'm married.

And she's my sister.

This is one of the situations in which one realizes a relationship is simply not meant to be. No, Bella is my best friend, and she'll never be anything more than that. No matter how many times he calls her beautiful, she never believes. She has to hear it from his ears again and again… but still can't convince herself.

Sometimes I wonder if she'd believe it if I told her.

"Bella, you're beautiful…"

The words die on my lips. Even though I am alone in my room, I can't form the whisper. The air and the despair swallows it up, snatches it from my mouth, crumbles the delicate hope into dust.

Called Beautiful Part Three

Rosalie/Alice/Bella

"Shut up, Alice! Just shut up!"

The scream echoes through the walls of the pale white house. If the sensitive ears of the vampires who live there weren't hundreds of miles away hunting for food, they would be writhing in pain. Currently, only Alice and Rosalie are in the house- and they are arguing.

"Why do you hate her so much? She's part of this family!"  
"No." It's a hiss. "She is a cancer, a tumor, and she's poisoning us all. She's getting inside what we have, our good stable sweet wonderful loves, and ripping them to pieces. Bella's destroying us, Alice… destroying me…"

And suddenly the shrieking screams turn to tears, fury to misery. The blonde girl sinks to her knees at the top of the stairs. The long beautiful hair, the only part of her perfect appearance that's even close to normal, flips to cover the unbearably attractive face as she falls to the floor, clutching the ground.

Her haranguing companion stops short. "Rose?"

"Alice… Alice… I think… I think I'm in love with her, and Alice, it's killing me…"

The other girl kneels beside me, looking right at her sister for the first time in years, since this whole twisted business started, and suddenly laughs aloud.

"That is totally not an appropriate response, Mary Alice Brandon Hale Cullen," Rosalie grimaces, turning to glare at Alice.

"Oh… Rose… and… here… I… I…" she attempts to choke out, stuttering the worlds between chuckles.

"What? Spit it out!" The irritation, no, anger, is back in her voice.

"Here I thought… I was the only one!" She is laughing now, shaking with it, trembling with relief and the revelation of this great irony. How the gods mock those they look down upon, as the ancients would suspect the cause of this event- can't you hear the forgotten deities chuckle at their cruel handiwork.

"Is it? Do you… do you… I don't…" Now it is her who struggles for the words. Her tears are implicit, though all are dried up, disappeared with her mortality, one can hear them in her voice.

"Yes, it's real, Rose. For me too."

"How can it be? How can this one ordinary human waltz in here and change all our lives so much?"

It's the question they'd all ask, even if it weren't for these two extra loves. They just compound it, the women in love with her. The fact that their brother has a heart after all is the real surprise, that he can feel something for the girl, that he can be in love… no one would have thought it of him. But it's so real, his newfound passion.

It is truer than anything else. And it is enough to doubt she is the normal girl one sees her as. It would be even if it weren't for the fact that she's miraculously attracted these two other vampires as well.

And they laugh together, beautiful harmony.

"Why, for you?"

"She… God, this sounds shallow. She's so beautiful."

Another laugh. "Me, too."

"You, Rose? Really? But, you're so…"

"If you say beautiful, I'll murder you."

"You are, though."

"Do you think so?"

"Yes."

The need in the words surprises both of them. Suddenly, the sisterly embrace changes into something more. It's a slight change. The movement doesn't alter, only the emotion.

"You're not Bella."

"And I'm sure as hell not Emmett either."

"You're more like Bella than Emmett, though."

"I hope so."

They laugh again. All this joy comes mostly from the relief. They are not alone in this love, this strange twisting of what they thought would last forever.

Hesitantly, Rosalie takes Alice's hand and turns to her. "You're beautiful, too."

Alice laughs again. "Don't be stupid. Compared to you? Or Bella?"

"People aren't beautiful because of what they look like. They're beautiful because of who they are."

"And that's why Bella is so beautiful."

"Exactly."

The two women turn to face each other. The distance between their faces fades away, the air melting, their lips just meeting, barely. It is a much less passionate kiss than so many they've shared or dreamed about. It's almost chaste, lips touching and nothing more.

It isn't worth it. Settling for each other when what they really want is her… it isn't worth giving up the stupid lying happy ending for.

And they both know it. But it doesn't stop the second kiss.

The End


End file.
